I know the one thing Meta needs to win the smart glasses race at Meta Connect — and it’s harder than it looks

Meta Connect 2025 is kicking off today, and one thing is obvious based on all the leaks and rumors leading up to Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote: it will be all about smart glasses.

VR headsets may get an Asus-shaped shout-out, but specs will dominate, and Meta’s rumored Hypernova (or “Ray-Ban Meta Display”) glasses with a built-in display look set to lead the charge. They look prime to take the vision set by Project Orion revealed last year, bring that tech and launch it in a $799 pair of consumer specs that bring a visual overlay to all the AI smarts that glasses can bring.

Technologically, this will be a significant leap forward that has been demoed by other companies over the past 12 months, but will really hit the mainstream with a big name like Meta going large with it. And in all honesty, I have no worries about the capability side of it all.

But there is one fundamental challenge that nobody has had an answer for, which I think Zuck’s crew could nail — making glasses that look cool to wear. It sounds easy on paper to do, but there’s so much more of a challenge here that nobody really sees. Let me explain.

Getting wave(guide)y on it

So why is this a challenge? The answer lies in waveguide — the display technology that allows for the picture to be projected directly onto laser-etched lenses rather than being sent through a prism, like in current AR glasses like the Viture Luma Pro.

For those uninitiated on prisms in AR specs, the micro-LED display tech is placed into the top of the glasses, projected down into them and reflected back into your eyes. It makes for a really pretty picture, and it does stash the tech itself in the top, so the frame itself doesn’t look oversized. But putting prisms in front of your eyes is an extra bit of glass in front of your eyes.

Waveguide gets rid of that extra screen blocking your view and makes for what I’ll call “actual” augmented reality. While I’d say that specs from Xreal do offer AR capabilities, they’re not really something you’d wear while walking around because of that additional glassware, making them look like a pair of spy glasses you’d buy at the Scholastic book fair.

This is a big benefit waveguide bring. But if you are to ditch the prisms, where do you put the LED projection tech? The answer to that brings up the ultimate obstacle that Meta needs to overcome: style.

Shout-out to Jimmy Neutron

Without being able to add thickness to the top of the glasses, which doesn’t really add a bigger visible dimension to the rims themselves, waveguide displays are usually put into the rim itself to project onto the lens. And this makes for some thick rims — like “the glasses your Dad probably wore to do his taxes back in the 80s” levels of thick.

It’s a breakthrough technology for sure, and in terms of achieving my dream future for smart glasses that marries AR and AI together, this is the way to do it. But the style is simply not there yet. The most subtle I’ve tried so far are the Rokid Glasses, and I’ll fully admit I look like I’m heading to an open casting for the real-life remake of “Dexter’s Laboratory.”

And in the leaks of Meta Hypernova, it’s looking like thick rims are definitely the way to do it right at the moment. That’s going to be a challenge for wearable tech that is so visible on your face, where style absolutely matters.

This is incredibly tricky to get right — packing the display tech and the computation needed to run it into a pair of specs is an uphill battle that I’m sure the design-minded likes of Ray-Ban are up to the challenge of. But the shrinking of this tech is going to take time.

That is the ultimate obstacle standing between smart glasses being the next big tectonic shift in consumer tech since the smartphone.

Outlook

If Zuck & Co. have been cooking, and if Meta’s Hypernova specs do manage to give us the aesthetics of a perfectly normal pair of glasses, then this race is over. But given the thick rims we’re seeing in these leaks, I feel that the finish line is a little further away.

Not to say the achievement (if leaks are true) isn’t significant. The vision of smart glasses is truly coming into focus more than ever, and it’s clear that Meta is in the driving seat here. But while the wayfarer frame is conveniently a little wider in the top corners to give you room for components, they do look a little chunky.

Of course, I get that this is a first-generation product, so this will get better (and smaller) over time. But when that leap will happen that convinces the public to jump on them, I’m not sure! If you listen to Snap after its launch of Snap OS 2.0, the answer to that is 2026. But watch this space…

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